You may as well call them the Sabrina Carpenter charts now.

 

Edited December 6, 2024Dec 6 by jmontague25

one very very very easy fix in the album charts considering those fake GH streams is in regards of this useless rule they have

that when you stream. song from an album it also gives a streams to the GH

 

so say you go search for Elton John-Sleeping with the past album and you stream it

you stream Sacrifice, that gives point to the parent album, but also to the Diamonds GH that no ones streams

 

even worse with Fleetwood Mac. People that stream Rumours give also lots of streaming points to the 50 Years GH cos that includes 7/8 tracks from Rumours.

 

So basically if they dropped this stupid rule, GH would be doing much less streams, and rightly so. I still don't get the rationale behind it.

Why if I streams Rumours I also have to give streaming points to one GH??

If you're gonna wheel out the same example, I'll wheel out my same reply

 

I suppose in those cases it's just cleaning up the clutter. An artist with multiple overlapping compilations having them all spread out arbitrarily* would create a chart that ceases to function in any logical way. The best thing the current situation has going for it is that we more or less can understand the breakdown of these streams, whereas otherwise we'd have an unclear fraction like 'oh, Green Day's compilation should be a little bit higher but we don't know how many streams have been siphoned by the other one'. Of course to that you could say that they get enough of an advantage as is, and I tend to believe that they should just be shipped off to their own chart but for the chart to function as it intends to right now, it's the only option to lap them all up together.

 

*Because what really matters 99% of the time is which one Spotify decides is the 'Top result'

The other unsatisfying answer is that these albums are there because the labels clearly don't have a problem with them being there. 'Oh it shouldn't be there because I don't like it and don't think anyone else does' isn't a good reason to base charts around.

 

"Diamonds" still sells better on pure sales every week in Australia than recent albums from Morgan Wallen & Noah Kahan that are charting every week btw. I'm sure its sales aren't close to 0 in the UK.

The point the article makes about Drakes chart topper is a valid one. I don't think I ever heard it during it's 15 weeks at number one, I did listen to it some time later out of curiosity but immediately forgot how it went. If you were around in 1991 it would be almost impossible not to know the Bryan Adams record.

 

Exactly that! By the end of Bryan Adams' long run at the top, or the end of Wet Wet Wet's a couple of years later, you'd have struggled to find anybody in the country who couldn't more or less sing the song word-for-word. To this day I couldn't tell you how One Dance goes, even though I must have heard it at least a few times.

Thing is that comparing Bryan Adams & Drake is a false equivalence. Not just for the difference in how the chart compiled, and the generation and a half time gap, but the two songs just weren't competing with each other. They were competing with whatever else was popular at that moment. The 16 & 15 week runs they managed says more about those songs than it does each other. If U2 released "The Fly" a few weeks earlier, Bryan's run could've stopped at 13 (I think, I could only find a UKMix thread with panel numbers). Drake spent a good chunk of his reign fending off Kungs & Cookin' On 3 Burners who were at #2, I'm gonna confidently say "One Dance" is a lot more well known than "This Girl". Drake lacking competition isn't a failing of the chart, it's just a quirk of timing and circumstance.

 

That and the chart has always been a measurement of raw consumption numbers (in whatever form they take at the time). I don't believe the chart has ever ranked songs based on the vague metric of 'Have people in my vicinity heard of it?', which is rife of echo chambers and self-affirmation. I think I know more people who vote first for the Greens party, rather than people who vote for the LNP, but the people who actually count the votes on Election Day have a less biased and more accurate perspective. I feel like everyone trusts the charts until they create a narrative that plays outside of what they're willing to accept, and at that point they'll sooner question the raw data rather than just accept that there's a huge population out there and the difference between a song that got streamed 300,000 times yesterday, and a song that got streamed 50,000 times is imperceptible to one person's observation. To the chart, that's the difference between being in the top 5 and probably not charting at all (I think? I haven't done the maths).

 

Drake is also an easy scapegoat for this sort of thing (especially in 2024!). In my first comment in this thread, I postulated if it's the modern change, or rather that this particularly unassuming smash hit that's the cause for concern. If instead the luck of the draw went to a more 'universal' smash like "Uptown Funk", would it get the same scrutiny? That song managed 7 weeks at #1 and a further 6 in the top 5 roughly a year before "One Dance", evidently it's not cutting it for that longevity but I imagine it sounds more like the song to do it than "One Dance" to most. But that's also a symptom of the way hip-hop gets undercut by anyone who isn't especially interested in the genre. This forum has a history of being a bit weird with it (scroll to post 10). The hiphopheads subreddit is nearly twice as big as the popheads one, so it is worth considering that there really is a wealth of folk out there for whom Drake is a much more significant figure in music history than Bryan Adams (for better or worse). I'm sure there was discourse in 1991 to suggest that Bryan too had benefitted from the charts ceasing to function properly, dismissing the credibility of the folk who were buying his single in the latter stages of its reign. There hadn't been a double digit reigning single since 1955 at that point, and by the same token, I don't think "Everything I Do" passes the sniff test on being monumentally bigger than "Bohemian Rhapsody" or pick your favourite '80s hit. He too just had all the right cards to have it happen.

 

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm endlessly ranting in this thread, I just have a strong background in statistical analysis and have been applying it to the music charts for a fairly long time with a perspective I don't often see covered elsewhere.

Funny thing with the 'One Dance' example is that it came a year before ACR, with which its run would have been curtailed at 8 weeks.

 

Not only that, but a few months later yet still pre-ACR, the streaming ratio was changed from 100:1 to 150:1, and with a 150:1 ratio 'One Dance' would have lost at least 7 and possibly 9 of its 15 weeks (2 or 3 to 'Can't Stop The Feeling!' while just barely keeping the 4th, then at least 3 and possibly all 4 to 'This Girl', and for the last two would have been behind at least 'Perfect Strangers' and 'Dancing On My Own' respectively). So the OCC quickly made two significant changes more than 7 years ago, both of which would have prevented 'One Dance' reaching double figures, yet it still gets thrown about as a symbol for why the charts are broken.

 

Conversely, 'Shape Of You', which also benefitted from being pre-ACR, was hampered by the 150:1 ratio but still managed 14 weeks at #1, 13 of them consecutive, and with 100:1 would have had 15 consecutive. Yet somehow 'Shape Of You' having a long run at the top doesn't fit so well with the "charts are broken" narrative. Since ACR was introduced, nothing has yet spent more than 11 weeks at #1.

Lot of the anti-One Dance stuff just sounds like boomers being out of touch. I remember it being absolutely everywhere in 2016. Obviously it's nowhere now so yeah its legacy has not been long lasting. Also I think people give way too much weight to the charts and treat it like something way bigger than what it actually is. In today's world where every piece of music is available in one place obviously everyone is going to go off and pick favourites, we're not limited to what we heard on Radio 1 or saw on TOTP last night anymore, of course a 60 year old won't have heard of Sabrina Carpenter who is being streamed by 10-30 year olds! The charts aren't broken, they're doing their best with what they have to work with. Obviously there's kinks in the system but the bare bones of it is fine to me

I want to see big changes to the charts, but it's the music industry that's broken, in that it struggles to break new artists.

The only thing that's broken really is the No.1 spot, ACR shouldn't affect the No.1. Sprinter would have spent 12 weeks at No.1 with no ACR and it should have had all 12 weeks, not have its sales cut after Week 10.

 

If a song leaves No.1 after its 10th week, and it doesn't go back to No.1 in the 2 weeks after it leaves that spot, THEN put it on ACR. Like a 12 week number 1 isn't going to hurt anybody really, yes people will obviously grow tired but the No.1 spot should be sacred, the amount of songs that are No.1s only because the song above got its sales halved is ridiculous.

That's a ridiculous rule, ACR should either affect everything or nothing!